One important factor in business management is profit. To increase profit, a business, such as a manufacturer, may desire to be able to provide its products to consumers in a cost efficient manner such that production costs are minimized. Further, a manufacturer may desire to have enough products readily available to meet the ever-changing demand of consumers. Without the ability to meet pending demand, a business may not only lose revenue due to missed current sales, but also revenue for future sales because customers may turn to competitors for similar products.
To ensure a manufacturer to meet pending demand, they may operate in three modes. First, the manufacturer may maintain an large inventory to ensure enough products are always on hand. Second, the manufacturer may operate their production facilities at a large capacity, thus always producing enough products to meet demand. And third, the manufacturer may perform a variation and/or combination of the two. Operating according to the first two modes would not be cost-efficient for a manufacturer due to storage and production costs. The third mode is difficult to optimize to ensure a manufacturer is producing products at a cost effective rate.
Accordingly, in order to reduce production costs while meeting demand, manufacturers have turned to process planning methodologies to optimize the performance of production operations. One conventional system that uses process planning methods is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,233,493. This system uses genetic algorithms to determine the most cost efficient production sequence for a product based on models representing resources, tasks, products, and components of the products. The algorithm is used to determine the best development sequence a production process should employ to reduce production costs. Although the system described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,233,493 may adjust a production process to maximize the efficiency of the process, the system does not take into account external factors that may affect production costs, such as drops in demand, increases in storage costs, etc.
Another type of process planning methodology that is gaining popularity is forecasting methods that determine how many products, and of what type, to produce in order to meet future demand. Typically, conventional forecasting methods determine various external factors, such as economic indicators, that may affect product development and then attempt to forecast a demand for the product based on these factors. Although these forecasting methods take into account external factors, they do not effectively predict future demand. One reason is that the types of external factor that are determined may not provide proper data to adequately predict the proper future demand of a product. Another reason is that the influence of any collection of factors in product demand is not consistent over time. therefore, even if the correct date was being analyzed, the previous methods were inadequate to establish a useable relationship.
Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture consistent with certain embodiments of the present invention are directed to solving one or more of the problems set forth above.